Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 9

This Trip Includes:

6. Used Simplymaps.com

4. More than 15 Miles Away from UCLA
3. Walking Trip

2. Car Trip

        Hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing and delicious Thanksgiving! This past weekend, I was back in Orange County for Thanksgiving festivities with my mom. On Sunday, my friend and I went to Santa Ana for the Patchwork Show, which is a really neat festival that has hand-made and usually locally made crafts! There is always creative and fun things at these types of festivals and I got a lot of cool holiday goodies. I also realized this would be a perfect opportunity to do some fieldwork for this project and examine the social difference in the city of Santa Ana.

       I think one of the first things someone would notice when driving through or visiting Santa Ana is the large Latino/Hispanic population in the area, which can be observed by the people walking on the streets and driving cars and also by the high volume of grocery, restaurant and building names that are written in both Spanish or English (sometimes the signs are only in Spanish). Notice on the picture below, on the right hand side there is a sign that says "El Paradiso Place." This is one of the most obvious indicators of the ethnic composition of Santa Ana.

Driving Through Santa Ana, Note the "El Paradiso" sign on far right.       

       This is also confirmed by 2010 U.S. Census Data. Using Simply Maps, I created the map below showing the percentage of Latino/Hispanic individuals living in Santa Ana which also explains the large volume of street signs in Spanish. You can see outside the yellow outline in the map (which symbolizes the outline of the city of Santa Ana) that this city is a location of high concentration of Latino/Hispanic populations as the majority of the Santa Ana falls into the 80-100% Latino/Hispanic population category. From the looks of this map, there seems to be a lot of urban segregation based on race/ethnicity in Santa Ana, as well as the surrounding areas as there is not much ethnic integration.
       This urban segregation seems to be correlated to the high rates of poverty, crime and health related issues in Santa Ana. According to this news segment from PBS, Santa Ana is one of the hardest places to live in the United States because of the class differences, economically and socially. The article also mentions that on many occasions the city of Santa Ana has allocated its money to build more stores, perhaps to promote economic growth in the city, instead of to the city residents. Instead of using the money to provide services for the residents of Santa Ana who need it or to help promote greater social equality in the city, money has been historically used along the lines of neoliberalism. The above article from PBS also mentioned attempts to create a new park in Santa Ana to promote greater health for the city residents by giving adults and kids a place to exercise and stay active. As we learned in class from Professor Wilford's lecture, "Axes of Difference: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality," access to parks and other nature areas is very dependent on class status, as the wealthier an area is the more access it will have due to greater economic and political power to create and designate parks and nature preserves and the poorer an area is the less access its residents will have to parks because they lack those same resources. This inequality in access to parks and nature areas reflects the social inequalities in place in Santa Ana, as well as reveals how the health of the current and future generations are being negatively impacted.

       I was looking at different variables with Simply Map and I found the "Forcible Rape Index" very interesting when observing Santa Ana. As you can see below, Santa Ana has very dark shades of red, which indicate that the index for Santa Ana forcible rapes is very high, with many areas in Santa Ana above the U.S. average. All the darkest shades of red (almost a maroon color) indicate where forcible rape is well above the U.S. average. I think forcible rape is a good indication of the crime that occurs in Santa Ana, as well as the quality of life compared to the surrounding areas, because it shows a somewhat violent crime being inflicted upon residents within Santa Ana. When there is a neighborhood with lots of crime and safety stressors, the quality of life is highly diminished compared to an area like Irvine or Huntington beach where there is significantly less crimes of this nature. I think the high rates of forcible rape could be connected to the high levels of poverty and gang related activities.

 

       I think one of the most dramatic ways I could tell this area has more poverty than the surrounding regions, other than actually visiting Santa Ana, was looking at the "Luxury Priced Product Market" as a variable on Simply Maps. This variable shows the market that companies and stores use to market their products in certain areas. In this case, they are taking into consideration luxury priced products, or products marketed for their luxury and status value. In the map below, Santa Ana is a very significant section of Orange County which is not included in the "Luxury Priced Product Market." In other words, high end products are not typically sold here as they do not expect the residents of this area to buy these types of products. 

        This is particularly insightful when considering the what class most of these residents are assumed to belong to. Class describes "socially stratified groups, separated by access to resources and levers of power" (Wilford 2012). Companies who chose not to market to the majority of geographic locations in Santa Ana do so because they do not believe that the people who live in the area have the economic resources or cultural motivation to consume luxury priced items. In addition, it suggests that because the residents in this area do not have the resources to buy luxury items, they probably possess less power (economically, politically and socially) than other areas surrounding (i.e. Irvine, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, etc.). This social difference in terms of many Santa Ana residents having less cultural and economic power than other groups could be a result of "class struggle" (Harvey 1978), with the more wealthy and powerful exploiting the work of those who live in Santa Ana in order to create "surplus value" (Wilford 2012), thereby creating and reinforcing their wealth and higher status.

       As we were driving a little bit further throughout Santa Ana, I noticed that there weren't too many big "chain" stores, like Ralphs, Safeway, 7-11, Starbucks, etc., instead there were many stores which looked like they were family owned and didn't really have a "brand" associated with them. For example, there is a picture below of a liquor store that doesn't have a name, but instead looks like it is family owned.

       From what I saw as we got closer to 3rd street was there there are also areas in Santa Ana that appear as if they are gentrified. There were many places on the 3rd street (down below) that had hip bars, clothing places and coffee shops. They looked relatively new, trendy and had sort of expensive and upscale feels to them. It was interesting, because a few blocks later, I witnessed graffiti and many stores that were closed down and ready for new businesses to lease the property.

3rd Street in Santa Ana, maybe gentrified?

       I also noticed there were many really beautiful and historic looking buildings in Santa Ana, which reminded me a bit of Old Tustin. Down below is the Santora building.

    Again, here is another example of how many of the stores in the area all seemed to be family owned and usually the store name signs were written in Spanish, which reflects the ethnic composition of the city. Down below, you can see there is the "Mi Salon Joyeria" and it appears to have a haircut special being advertised in the windows.

      
       I found the stores that were for lease or shut down very interesting, because most of them had a high level of graffiti in the form of scratch marks on the glass or permanent marker on the glass. This one didn't have as many of the graffiti markings, however it was protected by black iron bars in the windows, perhaps to prevent burglars from breaking in. Comparing these window fronts to the ones I witnessed in Westwood, there is definitely an aesthetic and perhaps utility difference in the storefronts which could reflect the difference in security and safety of the two areas.

        Here is an example of some of the graffiti I found on a really old brick wall. The majority of the graffiti can be seen on the white portion of the brick wall, but if you look closely you can see it is written on the entire wall. The infrastructure of the brick seems to have worn down a bit as well, indicating that this building is probably older and less cared for. Graffiti, can definitely be considered forms of art, however, these graffiti markings do not look as purposeful, perhaps they might be more written and performed on this particular building to show unhappiness with the city or the environment, or to show affiliation with certain gangs. Either way, lots of graffiti, as shown here, is defiling the building a bit.

       Lastly, here is a detour traffic sign with the words all scratched out by graffiti.

       Off topic, but, here's a little bit of fluffy cuteness for you! Here's a cute husky puppy someone around Santa Ana was carrying with them, only four weeks old!